The problem with these silk biotech companies will be scale up and competing with existing cheap and abundant fibers. Silkworm silk already has issues with wat

The problem with these silk biotech companies will be scale up and competing with existing cheap and abundant fibers. Silkworm silk already has issues with water and such clothing has to be professionally cleaned. Many silks have the property of supercontraction and will shrink by 50% upon exposure to water. Furthermore, these silk companies claim they can produce stuff as strong as natural spider silk, but that’s a very tall hurdle to jump. They stole VC interest by claiming that the fiber properties are engineerable, but very little academic research has been done in that space. So you have to wonder what is the market for expensive fibers that don’t perform well in the context of clothing that gets wet. Already you see companies like Bolt Threads pivoting towards cosmetics, because why not? The technical challenge is much lower and the profit per gram should be much higher.